W. P. KinsellaRecensioni

It's really too bad that so many folks see the book through the lens of the film, and I'm no exception. But they are two separate things. The film is fantastic, but so is the book on which the film is based. A novel has to be whittled down to fit into a hour and a half movie. There is so much that has to be left out. If you loved the film, and especially if baseball means a lot to you, do yourself a favor and read the book.

Most of the reviews of this book compare it to the movie (Field of Dreams), which is not quite fair. The film has a different theme than the book, stressing much more the relationship of Ray and his father, a minor part of the book (and the main story-line in the film), though the basic plot is the same. The film is meant to tear at your heartstrings. There are more characters in the book. I will try and avoid comparisons, and talk about the book itself. I originally read the book when it was first published and decided to re-read it again. So, what is the theme of the book? It is a fantasy, of course. But what kind? Most of the characters are long dead (all the so-called "Black Sox", Moonlight Graham, Ray's father), yet Ray, his family, and some others see and talk to them. "Shoeless" Joe even swings Ray's young daughter in his hands. Are they there? You only seem to see if you believe. Some characters only see an empty, small baseball field. Ray hears the voice, as does JD Salinger (Terence Mann in the film), and they see the message on the scoreboard. Or do they? Ray sometimes is suddenly in the past, then back to the present. Why is he directed to get Salinger, then find the dead Moonlight Graham (whom he never heard of previously)? Ray's twin brother is himself directed to re-connect with Ray. Is the book is about believing and following your dreams, even though it may seem crazy to others? Is it the love Ray has for "Shoeless" Joe that brings him back to life? Ray fulfills his dream, as does Moonlight Graham, Eddie Scissons (the "oldest Cub"). and Ray's father, even JD Salinger seems to. And what does the public see when they arrive at the field? Many questions that you must answer yourself after you read "Shoeless Joe". But, maybe that is the essence of a good book, it makes you think more. Kinsella creates great characters (I fell in love with Annie) and makes the historical characters seem realistic. It makes you love baseball (well, OK, I already did). By all means read this book, then try some of Kinsella's other books. Then read some JD Salinger, too...and flip through the Baseball Encyclopedia if you get a chance....

Let's get something straight: Field of Dreams is one of my favourite movies. Maybe... my very favourite movie. I've always known it was based on this book, but for whatever reason it has taken me over 20 years to actually read this book. It is weird, reading a book that you've already seen a movie adaptation of. I usually do it the other way around. So, not much of this story was a surprise to me. However, there is a LOT in this book that never made it to the movie. The thing about movies based on books is that movies get cluttered much faster than books do, so they need to be distilled, to get the essence of the narrative and apply cinematic principles to it. So, some of the key characters in the book (Ray Kinsella's twin brother, and Ray's buddy, "the oldest living Cub" for example) never made it to the movie, though they are constants throughout the novel. There is a scene in the movie where Ray's wife, Annie, stands up to a conservative crowd in a town hall meeting, defending a controversial book by Terence Mann, the fictional author who stands in for J. D. Salinger. Never happened in the book (and Salinger appears as himself there also). So, my point is that at times I was tempted to jump ahead or skip things as I was reading this book, because I knew how it was going to go. But, enough was different from the movie version that I actually couldn't be confident it WOULD go how it did in the movie. There is no reason the story should turn out the same in the movie as it does in the book. I won't tell you, dear reader, whether I was right or not -- you'll have to find out for yourself. Kinsella wrote a lot about baseball, and a lot about the Indigenous peoples of Canada (which maybe would be considered a big appropriation no-no nowadays, since he was a white guy). He mostly wrote short stories, which is not my genre of choice, so I doubt I'll dip much further into his bibliography, but I may pick up another of his baseball novels someday. He was a good writer, and I'm sure Field of Dreams is a great film because it had great source material.

Amazing…just amazing…but like Kinsella, I’m a baseball freak. Wrought with emotion, exceptionally written, an all over masterpiece. I need to read more of his work.

A collection of short stories set on a reservation in Alberta. Funny in places and desperately sad in others. My favourite was the first story Illianna Comes Home.

Magical realism done right! I read this years ago but was recently reminded of it and recalled how much I enjoyed it. The book is a bit different from the movie, and I liked them both. If you like baseball or magical realism, check it out.

About a baseball game only two men remember anything about (including the stats, scores and players), but which was never recorded in written history... Great story.

By the author of Field of Dreams, short stories set in a Canadian Reserve. Reserve is Canadian for Indian Reservation. Funny, sad, picaresque stories.

Contains:
The post office octopus --
The Vancouver Chapter of the Howard G. Scharff Memorial Society --
Gabon --
Syzygy --
The secret --
The siver porcupine --
Books by the pound --
The East End Umbrella Company Endowment for the Arts --
A page from the marriage manual for Songhees brides --
How I missed the million dollar round table --
The job --
The redemption center --
Marco in paradise --
Voyeur --
King of the street --
The resurrection of trout fishing in America shorty --
The letter writer --
Preserving fireweed for the White Pass and Yukon Railroad --
Strawberry stew --
Electrico utensilio --
The book buyers --
Doves and proverbs --
I am airport --
The gerbil that ate Los Angeles --
The history of peanut butter --
The alligator report : with questions for discussion.

An engaging, beautiful story with well-realized characters and incredible writing. I think that Kinsella sometimes hits the magical-realism-button a bit too hard, but this is otherwise one of the better books I've read this summer. Kinsella gets baseball on a level I didn't even know existed (which I really should have expected, but hey). Give it a whirl.

This book was the basis for the popular movie, "Field of Dreams." Kinsella's religion is the Church of Baseball, and while this book does have a narrative thread about a baseball-loving farmer trying to reconnect with his dead father, it is really more of a vehicle to tell fanciful baseball stories. If you love the game, you'll love the book, If not, you'll find yourself wishing he'd just get one with it. As I'm in the former category, I loved it.

Dance Me Outside is an excellent collection. All the stories are from the perspective of Silas Ermineskin and though I did take umbrage with the syntactical choices of the author (one which the character explains) I did find myself wondering why most all the Cree in this book talked like Silas. This quibble aside there are funny, poignant and some real gut-punches in this one. After a while the camaraderie of Silas, Frank Fence-post and others takes on an almost Steinbeck-esque level of brotherhood and escapades like how they band together to help Annie in the story Penance. Lark Song is one of the strongest in the collection, rendering the brother Joseph who suffered brain-damage when he was young and never gets any older inside his head. The resistance of the community to send Joseph to a care facility combined with the reality of his situation was well handled by Kinsella and it doesn't leave the reader with any definitive answers. I would have liked to have seen more lyricism that popped up in this story and Between. The handling of the American Indian Movement in The Inaugural Meeting seemed boorish at best and there could have, perhaps, been a much better way to highlight the disconnection between the day-to-day life and life of activists without making the CIA seem like benevolent and benign. The majority of these stories do handle the cultural divide between the Cree and farmers in a way that I've experienced and it is well worth a read for anyone looking for a solid short story collection.

This isn't a book that I would normally pickup because I am not a sports fan, but I always loved the movie and I occasionally find more real life information about the characters. It's made me love the story more. So far the book is very much like the movie. I almost hear Costner reading it in my head. I will be reading the Moonlight Graham story soon.

This isn't a book that I would normally pickup because I am not a sports fan, but I always loved the movie and I occasionally find more real life information about the characters. It's made me love the story more. So far the book is very much like the movie. I almost hear Costner reading it in my head. I will be reading the Moonlight Graham story soon.

Hard stories of down people.

Stories of unhappy people.

Good short stories. Little funny.

Sometimes a tale's telling serves merely as the delivery of plot (as is the case of most airport novels). And sometimes the telling itself completely overshadows the plot. Box Socials fits into the latter category. The narration is disarmingly hilarious. I imagine it was quite difficult, a bit of a nightmare, for W. P. Kinsella to write. The narrator uses (what I assume is) language and sentence structure to capture the rhythm of the gossip that one would encounter in rural, small town Alberta. He does this by adopting a set of descriptors and situations that are endlessly repeated throughout the novel, each repetition becoming funnier and funnier. Character Grunhilda Gordonjensen is bulldog-faced, and the reader will be reminded that bulldog-faced Grunhilda Gordonjensen is bulldog-faced every time she's mentioned. Alberta has terrible winter storms, or as the narrator explains, are "good old freeze-the-balls-off-a-brass-monkey" Alberta blizzards. Every time a terrible winter storm is mentioned, the narrator will stop and detail how it would be better to call it a "good old freeze-the-balls-off-a-brass-monkey" Alberta blizzard. I'm going off-topic here, but ya know how everyone describes Baroque era classical music as "math"? If you've ever played an instrumental piece, even an easier version of an instrumental piece, by the likes of J. S. Bach, or sung the Alleluia Chorus by Handel, you'd understand what they mean. Baroque music is patterns, patterns, variations of patterns, all intricately woven in such a way that it's never uninteresting to the ear. In a weird way, the narrative style of Box Socials strongly reminds me of this. It's Baroque music, except that the notes are gossipy descriptions and the overall piece is absurd.

On a personal note, the Canadian setting was a little lost on me, but I enjoyed and related to the Norwegian Lutheran-ous of the characters. It's not as on-target as something you would expect from Garrison Keillor (Kinsella confuses Lutheran liturgical forms with the fire-and-brimstone of other Protestant groups), but it was still fun to read.

Audiobook. This was the Kinsella book that became the movie 'Field of Dreams'. Can't recall the movie well enough to say how it differs but the book was delightful. The nostalgia and love for the wonderful game and pastime were palpable. What also touched me was Ray's earthy love for his wife Annie - nothing graphic but earthy and lovely. This really is a mystical, feel good masterpice.

I love W.P. Kinsella's work. This book of short stories is the first, although he is more recognized for Dance Me Outside. All of the stories are written in the voice of Silas Ermineskin and are about things that happen on his small Albertan reserve. While many people dislike Kinsellas Indian book because they don't feel he can write authentically about Indians being white, I strongly disagree. I think his characters are flawed yet beautiful, and capture something of reserve life that often gets overlooked or left behind. There wasn't a single story I didn't enjoy.

This book was published in 1989. It contains a series of interconnected short stories set on a fictional Indian reserve near Hobbema in Alberta. The narrator of all the stories is Silas Ermineskin, a young man who goes to Technical School in Hobbema but seems to spend a lot of his time shooting pool and drinking at the pub. His best friend is Frank Fencepost who has similar occupations. In the first story Frank joins a literacy class and when he is asked why he wants to learn to read he says he wants to read Silas's stories. That sounds like a great reason to learn to read to me.

Many of the stories are funny. One of the best is Tricks which is about Frank's practical jokes. However, a lot of the stories are sad or bittersweet. The Sundog Society about a feud between two men is one of those. I think I'll probably remember the sad stories longer than the funny ones.

I know Kinsella's stories set on the reserve are not universally appreciated by aboriginal Canadians because they view him as a white person making fun of or exploiting native culture. However, I don't think aboriginal Canadians have an exclusive right to talk about their culture and I certainly don't think Kinsella makes fun of them. Read these stories and then, if you haven't read it, also read Green Grass, Running Water by Thomas King. King is native (although not Canadian) and the setting is a very similar part of Alberta.

Certainly amusing, and there were a lot of absurd elements that I quite appreciated at the time and were of a style that I later incorporated into my writing. But it didn't have enough staying power for me to rate it.

Has a mystical feel. Sort of a science fiction/baseball book. Very enjoyable.

Yes, the author is THAT W.P. Kinsella, the one who wrote the story on which the movie Field of Dreams was based. Which, you’d think, would make the rest of his fiction a little more popular and a lot easier to find. Alas, that doesn’t seem to be the case: I’ve spent hours scouring used book stores and the back stalls of Amazon in search of Kinsella’s canon. Why? Because as anyone lucky enough to have encountered the original version of “Shoeless Joe” in an anthology – or the author’s “The Iowa Baseball Confederacy” or “Box Socials,” for that matter - can attest, Field of Dreams wasn’t a fluke: W.P. Kinsella knows how to tell a great story. Stories of hope, stories of despair, stories of love, stories of neglect, funny stories, nostalgic stories, tragic stories … above all, stories filled with wonder and magic and – yes - baseball.

As in “The Last Pennant Before Armageddon,” in which a weary old baseball manager must choose between winning his first pennant or triggering the end of the world. As in “How I Got My Nickname,” in which a pimply, overweight teenage bookworm with a gift for hitting has to make the choice that will determine his destiny. As in “The Night Matty Mota Tied the Record,” in which Death appears to offer a baseball fan the option of dying in the place of a baseball phenom, thus allowing the baseball phenom to realize his full measure of greatness. As in “The Battery,” which features twin boys born to be baseball prodigies, prophecies, coups, kidnappings, cockatoos, bookies, bad trades, magical manifestations, mind-reading, and an actual wizard. As in “The Thrill of the Grass,” in which a silent swarm of baseball fans, animated by the single shared purpose, undertake a feat of prodigious baseball magic.

Nor are the other stories in this collection lacking in magic, though Kinsella summons it in its more familiar form – love: hopeful love (“Driving Towards the Moon,” in which true love blossoms between a weary housewife and a young baseball star), hopeless love (“Barefoot and Pregnant in Des Moines,” in which romantic love gradually fades into habit), love gone wrong (“Nursie,” in which a baseball player reflects on the disasterous remains of his high school romance), brotherly love (“Bud and Tom,” in which a dispute over baseball destroys the bond between two brothers), self-love (“The Firefighter,” in which selfishness dooms a family to ironic tragedy), doomed love (“The Baseball Spur,” in which we learn that while neither love nor baseball are forever, hope endures).

Given so many lovely tales to choose from, I suspect it would be hard for any two people to agree on a single favorite. But then, isn’t that one of the qualities that makes a book of short stories great? Make that doubly true when the theme is baseball and the author is a bit of a wizard himself.½

I picked this off of my bookshelf to honor the memory of the author, who just passed away last Friday. This particular copy is the one I bought at the Field of Dreams in Iowa on 9-16-01! (I know the date because I left the receipt in the book!) Literally exactly 15 years before he died! Super crazy, huh? If I read it, will HE come (back)? Eee... I also left a leaf of husk from an ear of corn in that field, and it's still in there, between pages 250-251! I had intended to use it as a bookmark, but I think it should remain where it is. wow.

I loved this read! Almost all of the great lines from the movie are pulled right from these pages! It's like a long love letter to the game of baseball! Having the author be J.D. Salinger was awesome! And I loved "The Oldest Living Chicago Cub" too! Just a great baseball read! I hope Mr. Kinsella is now in his own, well deserved, field of dreams!